Unknowing metaphor alert

"These pages you are holding contain more than news and features. They are an inky artefact, a monument to the efforts of a trade, a profession, a type, whose time, I fear, is passing."

Three comments come to mind, and here my editor's soul is MIA.

1) "Is passing"? Wrong tense.

2) "These pages you are holding". Heh.

3) When was the last time this guy had an original thought or expression, or even a decent limit on his word count?